The usage of mobile communication systems utilizing mobile devices has become widespread. Mobile devices such as telephones, pagers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), data terminals, etc. are designed to be carried by those who travel from place to place. Each mobile device is capable of communicating by wireless communication between the mobile device and an access point to which the mobile device is registered. As the mobile device roams from one cell or geographic region to another, the mobile device will typically deregister with the access point of the previous cell and register with the access point associated with the new cell.
In general, when one network component transmits a signal to another network component, the transmitting network component typically expects a response from the receiving network component within a reasonable time frame. If a response is not received within the reasonable time (e.g., lapsed time-out), communication usually terminates. In order to respond to such transmissions in a timely manner, many devices continuously operate in a high power (e.g., full power) mode such that a device can continuously, periodically and/or on demand, monitor, receive and respond to incoming transmissions.
Current industry trend, however, is to minimize power consumption. Common techniques that mitigate power consumption include automatic power management utilities that transition a device to a lower power or “off” state. For example, many devices utilize standard power management technologies, such as Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI), which enable system software/firmware (e.g., operating system or application) to control power by automatically transitioning the device to a low power state (e.g., Standby, Suspend, Hibernate, Sleep, Deep Sleep . . . ) when full power is not required. Typically, when the device transitions to the lower power state, network connections are terminated and power is removed from the CPU, volatile memory, transceivers, etc. The foregoing can conserve power consumption and battery life, however, the device essentially is inoperable to communicate with the outside world until it transitions back to a higher power state.
Mobile computing devices lack the ability to configure and/or automatically and dynamically manage power consumption of multiple network adapters and cost of, or options for, use of network connectivity. This places a burden upon a user to either statically predict and set or manually configure the nominal operating mode periodically. This does not facilitate flexibility and/or adaptability during operation of the device. Therefore, what is needed is an optimum power-connectivity trade-off that can be continuously obtained and updated automatically and/or dynamically on a device.